Sunday School Message for Elementary School Students: Your Small Tongue Can Hurt Your Friends!

Introduction

A church I know in South Korea has English service once a month. I help translating the messages from Korean to English. And I thought: 'Why let them go to waste after being preached just once?' So here’s is the message for this month. This message was preached to elementary school students.

If you pay attention, there are many beautiful things that are small! | Source

If you pay attention, there are many beautiful things that are small! | Source

Your Small Tongue Can Hurt Your Friends!

Scripture: James 3:5 - the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. (NIV)

Let me tell you something that happened to my friend long time ago. When he was in elementary school, he got bitten by something on both knees. Do you know what that something was? It’s a mosquito.

It’s almost the time of the year for mosquitos to come out. Mosquitos are small insects, but they can make you itch badly. And sometimes, they can hurt you badly, too. And after listening to today’s message, you might become afraid of them.

When my friend was 12, he was bitten by mosquitos on both knees. And soon, his mosquito bites got infected because he scratched them too much. He had something called sepsis, and he had to get penicillin shots for a month. And also for a month, doctors took the pus out of his knees with syringes. I’m still scared of syringes and shots. Imagine how my friend felt when he was only 12.

Jesus’s brother James warns us that something very small can be very deadly. Remember how a small mosquito hurt my friend badly?

Let’s read today’s passage together. James chapter 3, verse 5. Since it’s a very short verse, we’ll read in English and then in Korean. The English version is in the bulletin.

James tells us that tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. It is as if small cigarette butt making a big forest fire. Likewise, tongue is small, but it can cause great damage. Words out of a mouth can have healing powers, but it can also have power to hurt and destroy.

That is why it is very important to use our words wisely. If not, we can hurt others with words. Careless words can cause conflicts, and harsh words can even ruin someone’s life. That is why some celebrities commit suicide because of negative things people say on the internet.

But wise words can alleviate others’ pains, and words spoken with love can heal others. So let’s watch our mouths!

Let’s pray.

Dear God, help us to use our tongue wisely. You made every part of our body, so help us to use them to do the things you like. Help us to use our tongues to speak kind words so that we may use it to heal and bless others. And if we ever spoke wrong words that hurt others’, please help us to not make the same mistakes again, and give us courage to apologize to the people who we hurt with our words. In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.